Senate / Congressional Structure

The proposal

“Reform the Senate” covers three distinct constitutional changes: proportional representation (amend Article I, Section 3 so that states with more people have more senators); abolishing the Senate; and repealing the Seventeenth Amendment so that state legislatures again choose senators. Each changes how the Senate is constituted; ideas that leave its structure alone — House expansion, the filibuster, statehood — we track separately.

The evidence

The anchor measurement is Pew Research Center’s, from July 2023. Told that the Constitution requires two senators per state regardless of population, 32% of Americans said it should be amended so that states with larger populations have more senators; 66% said it should not be. By party, 19% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats favored the change, as did 32% of independents (Pew Research Center, 2023).¹

Two other measurements corroborate it. Pew’s 2018 asking found 24% for amending — 14% of Republicans, 31% of Democrats (no independent breakdown published) (Pew Research Center, 2018).² Bright Line Watch, an academic survey fielded by YouGov, asked in 2021 whether every state should have equal representation or states with more people should have more senators: 36% chose population — 56% of Democrats, 17% of Republicans, about 25% of independents (Bright Line Watch, 2021).³ Both items are binary choices naming no mechanism; 32–36% is a ceiling for any specific design.

The other two variants are unpolled by our standard. We located no independent poll with a party breakdown on abolishing the Senate; an August 2026 review of polling on a party platform that includes it reported no figure.⁴ We could verify none on repealing the Seventeenth Amendment; its vehicles are single-party — a June 2026 House joint resolution with a sponsor and nine cosponsors from one party,⁵ and an Arizona legislative memorial that divided along party lines.⁶

The test it failed

The bipartisan floor is 19% — Republicans, Pew 2023. Verdict: Weak.

High topline, low floor, in an unusual form. The topline is itself a minority, 32–36%, and the floor is under half of that. Even the more supportive party is split — 45% and 56% of Democrats in the two measurements.¹³ No majority anywhere in the electorate favors the core proposal.

Support tracks who holds the advantage. Each party’s view follows whether equal state suffrage currently helps or hurts its coalition; Seventeenth Amendment repeal is coded the opposite way by the same logic. Neither variant can be written behind the veil.

The symmetry test. Proportionality shifts power from less-populous to more-populous states; abolition removes the states’ chamber; repeal shifts the choice of senators from voters to legislatures. Each has an identifiable winner, and there is no abuse on one side to pair with an abuse on the other — only a design each side dislikes.

The why-an-amendment test, in reverse. Only an amendment can touch Article I, Section 3 — but Article V ends: “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”⁷ The Constitution Annotated treats this as an unamendable subject — a two-step repeal-then-reapportion amendment “would still violate Article V’s plain language”⁸ — and the National Constitution Center’s common-interpretation essay reads it the same way.⁹ Proportional representation therefore requires the consent of every state that would lose seats — unanimity, not three-fourths; abolition is contested under the same clause. Only Seventeenth Amendment repeal is procedurally an ordinary amendment, and it has no cross-party support.

Framings we tested

• The two independent measurements above — Pew’s amend-or-keep item (19% of Republicans, 45% of Democrats, 2023) and Bright Line Watch’s forced choice (17% and 56%, 2021) — are Weak.¹³
• “Abolish the Senate”: unpolled independently; it appears in one organization’s 2026 platform and is used by the opposing party’s Senate campaign committee as an attack line.¹⁰
• “Let state legislatures choose senators”: no verified independent party breakdown; every vehicle is single-party, including a model resolution for state legislators.⁵¹¹ The opposite coding of the same category, not a rescue.
• Structure-preserving variants — a different number of senators per state with equality kept, or changes to terms — are amendable by the ordinary route, because Article V entrenches equality, not the number.⁸ They have never been polled and do not answer the grievance behind the category — a different proposal wearing the name.

None clears the bar. Where congressional structure can be tested across parties, it is filed elsewhere: House expansion and the filibuster are candidates; congressional term limits are a target amendment.

The path back

None identified for proportional representation or abolition, for two reasons, each sufficient: the Republican floor has never exceeded 19% in three independent measurements over five years,²³¹ and Article V means even a Strong floor could not produce ratification without every losing state’s consent.⁸ Seventeenth Amendment repeal could be re-examined if an independent pollster published a favor/oppose item on legislatures choosing senators with a Democratic floor of at least 45%; none is known. We would revisit if a Pew or comparable re-ask of the 2023 item showed Republican support at 45% or better; even then, Article V would have to be resolved before drafting.

← All rejected categories